Nadia Paschetto, the director of the Arras Film Festival which she co-founded with general delegate Éric Miot, discussed the 26th edition of the event kicking off today (read our news).

Cineuropa: What’s the editorial line of your European competition (article)?
Nadia Paschetto: We choose films which tell stories which are either inscribed within our history or within our very modern society, and which explore relationships within families or between couples. In fact, it’s very often women who are the focus of these films. We take great care over the quality of the storylines and the dramaturgies, but also the acting, which is really important to us. These films have to transport us, make us think, challenge us, and make us want to share them.

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It seems to be going down well with the public, given the 50,000 admissions you’ve recorded, making the Arras Film Festival a very popular event.
Whenever we watch a film as part of the selection committee, we always think about the audience. How will they react? Are they ready to open themselves up to this kind of story? We have lots of viewers, a demanding audience which loves film and which follows the entire competition with a real sense of diversity and a desire to discover stories which stretch beyond French borders. We open up a window onto what’s happening in Europe today. We’re also in the process of winning over a younger audience - the 20-30 age bracket, and even a little younger than that - with a communications strategy which was introduced two or three years ago, involving lots of activity on social media and on TikTok, using different formats, short videos, etc. The post-Covid period really challenged us: it’s now or never if we want to win over this new audience! Because we have to think about our future audience and set about building it. We’re doing this by way of the films presented in the festival, such as N121 by Morade Aïssaoui and Summer Beats [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Lise Akoka, Romane Gueret
scheda film] by Lise Akoka and Romane Guéret, which are really causing a stir, as well as through attractive pricing for under 25s (a Youth Pass, costing 20 euros for 4 films) and the groundwork we carry out throughout the year on building up audiences, targeting the school system all the way through to university.

What’s your view on the state of European cinema?
There are complications when it comes to producing, especially in certain countries when you’re not in power spheres. It was already a trend, but one of the consequences of these difficulties is that most films are co-productions between several countries. But there are still voices everywhere offering up a different kind of high-quality cinema and with something to say. And when we’ve liked a film by a filmmaker, we’re keen to discover their next one. So we keep tabs on auteurs and, this year, our competition will welcome back Macedonia’s Teona Strugar Mitevska, Bulgaria’s Stephan Komandarev and Poland’s Piotr Domalewski. We’ve been following Italian director Ivano de Matteo for years and we’ve previously presented one of his films in the European Discoveries section. It’s a kind of film family, which is growing but it isn’t closed off, because it has additional names joining it every year, like Lithuania’s Gabrielė Urbonaitė, Swiss director Marie-Elsa Sgualdo, Ireland’s Eamonn Murphy and Belgium’s Jean-Benoît Ugeux, with their first feature films.

This approach is also true of the projects pitched during Arras Days, the professional sidebar of your festival where Teona Strugar Mitevska’s Mother [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Teona Strugar Mitevska
scheda film] (which opened this year’s Orizzonti line-up in Venice) spent time, for example.
And Teona is going to pitch her second project here this year, much like Stephan Komandarev, Piotr Domalewski, Eamonn Murphy and Slovenia’s Urška Djukić (highly praised in Berlin for Little Trouble Girls [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Urška Djukić
scheda film]), etc. We’re really happy when projects pitched in Arras Days make it onto the international scene. It means that our instincts were right and, in recent years, this has also proved true with Il Boemo [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Petr Vaclav
scheda film] by Petr Václav (in competition in San Sebastian in 2022), Panopticon [+leggi anche:
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intervista: George Sikharulidze
scheda film] by George Sikharulidze (in competition in Karlovy Vary in 2024), Hesitation Wound [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Selman Nacar
scheda film] by Selman Nacar (selected for Venice’s Orizzonti section in 2023), Three Kilometres to the End of the World [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Emanuel Pârvu
scheda film] by Emanuel Pârvu (in competition in Cannes 2024) and Made in EU [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Stephan Komandarev
scheda film] by Stephan Komandarev (screened in Venice’s Spotlight section in 2025). But we’re also careful to platform talent from our own region, Hauts-de-France. So, for the second year running, a project which received writing support from Pictanovo is going to be pitched. Last year, it was Nouveau monde by Margaux Elouagari, which then scooped an advance on receipts from the CNC and was shot over the course of the summer (read our article), and this year it’s the turn of Marie Vernalde’s Kathy Moves.